


A Broader Mark for Sorrow

by Destina



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-12
Updated: 2006-06-12
Packaged: 2018-01-07 03:56:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1115197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destina/pseuds/Destina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronon stops running.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Broader Mark for Sorrow

**Author's Note:**

> Written for thisisbone and posted to LJ in 2006.

Ronon had been on the run just weeks when he tried for the first time to have the work done. He wanted to pay tribute; he needed the marks set into his skin, a permanent remembrance of his lost world, of all his dead. The past would be etched into him, needle driving down sharp past the outside, closer to his heart. Perhaps then he would be able to release his pain. 

He chose a world whose people had centuries of experience fighting the Wraith, a people who had never been cowed despite their losses - just in case he wasn't fast enough - and made his way into their midst, seeking an artist who could set the ink to his body. It occurred to him that Sateda had been a world filled with confidence, once. _The Wraith will not dare come here, and if they do, we can defeat them,_ Kell had said, arrogant in the face of certain destruction. Ronon had heard the stories of races destroyed, entire civilizations conquered. He had known that when Sateda fell, the rest of the worlds they knew would fall in its wake. 

He knew he might become the string by which the untainted worlds unraveled, if he was not quick and careful, but some lingering denial persisted. He knew he was foolish to risk so much for a gesture no one else could understand, but he had nothing else to cling to. 

"Hurry," he urged, turning the lantern down low, then lower still, one eye on the wisps of smoke trailing across the open doorway. Outside in the cool night, patrons walked by, oblivious to the danger in their midst. Ronon lifted his shirt over his head and tossed it aside, then sat expectant, hands resting on his knees. 

The artist glanced up, eyes narrowed. "This kind of work can't be rushed," she said. "Surely you've been told."

"There's no one left to say it," Ronon said in a low growl. "Get on with it."

One by one, the artist set out brush, ink, needle, and cloth. "Give me the beliefs I will write for you," she said, in almost the way a Satedan would say it, if any were still alive to perform the task. 

"Vengeance," Ronon said, thinking of his hands around Kell's neck, his knife slicing sweetly through his battle-scarred skin. "Exile." 

She nodded, lowered her head toward her work. Her hair was dark, tied in a soft knot at the back of her neck above the collar of a sky blue shirt. He wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to have something to run toward, instead of running away, always away. 

Quick strokes of the brush, a stylized design, and the artist presented the paper to him. "Will this suffice?" she asked. He traced each one with a finger, nodded his approval; the quick flash of pleasure in her eyes made him smile. 

Just then, the whining cry of a Wraith ship sounded overhead, and the first scream pierced the night air. 

He thought of the artist, from time to time, whenever he stopped to find food, or to buy weapons; he remembered her brown eyes, the curve of her neck beneath the soft fall of hair. He used the image of fear on her face, the imagined slump of her lifeless body beneath the killing hand of the Wraith, to quicken his pace. The guilt never failed to make him run faster. 

 

***

When he stopped running, he had to learn to rest all over again. Not an easy thing in a city like Atlantis, where the beds were deceptively soft and the people eyed him nervously, as if they expected him to be that which he had always fought against. Sheppard said they'd been hunted, but Ronon knew they had no idea what it meant to be hunted, the depth and bitterness of it. He hoped they would never find out. 

Even in his restless sleep, the city intruded. On his first full night in Atlantis, a single sound woke him and pulled him up from the floor, listening for its traces. In a place so big, so empty, he could hear the echoes of voices in every corner, but this was different - smaller, like a broken thing lost in a dark place. He narrowed his eyes and reached for his weapon, but of course he didn't have it. Sheppard had explained it all when he came to the city. Just a precaution, Sheppard had said, but he saw the way they looked at him, sizing him up and considering whether or not they could take him.

They couldn't. He was pretty sure they knew it, too.

When he stepped out into the corridor, the guards were there. Two of them, as tall and as big as he was, though Sheppard had to be smart enough to get that they were useless against him. They lagged behind him, leaving themselves vulnerable -- if he wanted them to be. He wasn't sure, yet. 

Most of the city was quiet, but he was aware of all the parts that weren't. Two men arguing in the labs as they passed by - one was McKay, but the other's voice was stilted, strange. In a different lab, there were three women discussing a piece of equipment. Not things he was interested in. He tilted his head and stopped, waiting for more; behind him, the guards breathed loud enough to interfere. He blocked them out. When he started walking again, he knew exactly where he was going. 

Getting across the city took longer than he thought, even at a jog. They let him go, for a while, until he reached a closed door - and then they stopped him. "Off limits," one of them said.

"Get Sheppard," Ronon answered, focused on that tiny, hitching gasp behind the door.

"His orders." 

Ronon turned and eyed him. Soldiers were all alike, anywhere he'd ever run. When he'd been one, he'd been like this, too - rigid, unyielding. 

He could test the boundaries now. It was tempting. But not over this. "There's a girl," he said, looking for signs they cared at all. "She's crying."

"Athosians," one of them said, "visiting Teyla," and the way he said it, Ronon understood: not their problem. Not his, either. They wouldn't allow it. Ronon hadn't had the luxury of compassion for others in a very long time, but Sheppard's people had their own ways. 

The girl was still crying when he turned away and went back to his quarters. He still didn't try the bed. Too soft. The floor was comfortable enough. 

He didn't sleep. 

 

***

Kell had a way of teaching lessons so they would be remembered. 

The first time Ronon fell during a climbing exercise, he was made to hang suspended from the ropes at a height that guaranteed death, should he weaken and release his grasp. Kell stood below, watching through slitted eyes. Only later did Ronon come to understand he was waiting for the inevitable, the shaking muscles and twitching skin that would signal the end. At the time, his entire focus was on the rope, on survival. 

In his fourth year of training among Sateda's elite squadrons, he lost his grip on a weapon and was forced to grapple hand-to-hand for his life. For the rest of his days, he would bear the scar from Kell's blade, its presence an instructive reminder never to drop his guard. He was proud of the mark; it was evidence of all he had learned. 

On the last day of Sateda's reign as an unconquered world, Kell revealed himself a coward, hiding behind innocents to preserve his own life. The image of his retreat was burned into Ronon's memory, along with the sound of screams, the smell of blood and fire.

Leaders betray; leaders care nothing for their people. It was a lesson learned at a dear cost, and in seven years of running, Ronon found no example to counter his belief. 

Once, Sheppard asked him to stay behind, to leave the hunt; once, Sheppard took the danger for himself, though he knew Ronon was the better hunter. Once, Ronon obeyed, though he knew it was a foolish thing to do. 

On that day, Ronon learned Sheppard was nothing like Kell at all. 

 

***

Straight over the city, pushing forward until his legs burned and his lungs couldn't grab enough air, he did what he knew best: he ran. He let the sound of his feet hitting the metal set a cadence for him, better than a hundred drums, the hollow ring of a man-made space. He tried not to think of himself as trapped, and it was easier when he could focus on the bang bang bang of metal on the arc. 

Behind him, Sheppard's footsteps were lighter, more distant, but he was quickly catching up. Ronon didn't have to turn to know Sheppard was lengthening his stride, working to make up time. Sheppard tried hard, but he nearly always fell behind. Ronon slowed just enough to match Sheppard's stride, giving him a tiny advantage. He would never know. Then Ronon picked up the pace again, full-out to the end of the route, across the last two hundred yards of the overhead path they had designed for their workout. 

Easier to run there than on the decks and in the hallways, where he could see nothing but strangers and sky, and no land anywhere in sight. There was nothing to push against there, nothing to fight, just emptiness and open air. He tried going through things to ease the frustration - through Sheppard's men, through barriers of protocol he pretended not to notice, even through rules he knew and understood because they weren't unlike the rules he used to follow. 

He tried pushing Sheppard, too, but Sheppard pushed back, in his own way. It wasn't a way Ronon preferred, but it was a way he recognized. That was part of why he stayed, and maybe, it was part of why Sheppard asked him. 

Near the end of the catwalk he slowed, listened; Sheppard was catching up. When Sheppard finally got there, sweating like an out-of-shape elder, Ronon put out an arm and caught him, stopped him from going on. Sheppard smacked his arm away and hung his torso over the railing, coughing and breathing heavily in an exaggerated way. "You're all right," Ronon said impatiently, more to call him out than to reassure, and when Sheppard glanced up at him, there was a distinct glint in his eye. 

"Would've beat you, if you hadn't pushed me over back there," he said, not angry. 

"Excuses are for the weak," Ronon said. 

Sheppard barely drew another breath before he was off again, shooting past Ronon like the wind. Ronon grinned and followed, and they finished the run together. 

 

***

On Kesala, the people would take nothing in trade for their wares. All must be paid for with tangible currency, something Ronon sorely lacked in the first year on the run. He offered the clothes off his back, the hair from his head; none would take his offers. 

This was how he came to rob the drunken beggar who accosted him in the street. He did not plan it; he did not mean it, did not intend harm, but his hands moved ahead of his heart, and he killed without thinking. When he stood staring at the body, he could barely remember what he had done or how he had done it. The shadows of Wraith stood at his shoulder, mocking him. He surrendered the last vestiges of his old life into the darkness. 

He took what he could: coat, credits, the small knife, even the boots from the beggar's feet. Laced together and thrown over his shoulder, they weighed little enough. 

In the morning, he stole a fruit from the vendor near the weapons merchant. Newly supplied with good knives and a stunner, he made his way back to the gate. He considered the vows he had made in service, the code he was sworn to: never to kill without provocation. Those days were over. Better to survive with regret than to die with a clean conscience. And these - these were not his people. He owed them nothing. His people were dead and gone, and it was not his time to join them. Not yet. 

 

***

He began to think of the inhabitants of Atlantis as his people. 

The first time, it caught him off guard. Sheppard was standing to his left, McKay to his right; Teyla was behind him. He leveled his weapon at a stranger's face, as he had a thousand strangers in his short but hard-lived life, and thought of his people. Not protecting them, but fighting beside them, part of a common effort. 

They returned to the city, Sheppard full of jokes, McKay talking incessantly, his tongue loosened by fear. Ronon tolerated their presence only as long as Weir required, and then he was off, prowling the confines of this place that was not his home, where his people did not live. 

Sheppard went looking for him, later; Ronon wouldn't allow himself to be found. 

This new awareness crept up on him in the middle of routine duties. Sparring with Sheppard, he was struck by a feeling of kinship, and by the existence of trust. Walking the city with Teyla, he smiled in response to her smile, and knew the warmth of her friendship, sincerely offered. Even McKay's barbed criticisms failed to sting, for now he understood they were defensive, no more, no less. Ronon fought with weapons, McKay with words. Each man had his way. 

On each world they touched, he searched the crowds for signs of his own, the depth of his longing as dark as it ever was. Once in a great while he would see a face, the outline of a profile, and imagine it was someone he had known in another life, a fragment of the past. He would draw close, and find he was mistaken. 

Sheppard always noticed, but he never asked, and Ronon never offered explanations. 

He went to the closed portion of the city, the one that had once been forbidden to him, and walked the corridors there, listening. He had free access to the city now. The Athosians were gone, retreated to the mainland, the exile of their choice. He turned his head, in tune with the sounds of the city, and waited for the echo. It came to him from places too far away to be reached by running, places beyond the reach of the gates: a child's cry, plaintive, thin. 

For a long time, he stood quiet in the corridor, his back to the wall. With his fingers, he traced invisible marks on his skin. 

 

***

In the night, he dreamed of the ones who were gone. 

Most often it was Kell, whose wisdom had once seemed inviolate, from a place beyond the understanding of boys such as Ronon was when he came into service. He remembered the places of his youth, vivid in his dreams: the training field, shimmering in the heat and full of the laughter and shouts of boys; the field of honor, where mock battles were fought in preparation for spilling blood; the barracks, where he played _charok_ with the other boys and won, taking all their extra possessions and hoarding them the way _simo_ beasts hoarded food for the winter. All things were negotiable; this is what Ronon learned, as he traded them back their own things. 

Sometimes he saw the face of Herat, whose kind words and strong hands had shaped him, showing him the way. She had been the best of the training masters, better even than Kell, who knew an asset when he saw one. Ronon was destined for Kell, the way the sun was destined for the sky, but Herat shaped and cast the weapon he would become. 

In those rarest of all dreams, his mother came to him, smelling of the winter grasses and smiling her gentle smile, and in those dreams, Ronon fell to his knees and wept, clinging to her skirt until she faded back into the nothing of the past. In the darkness, there was only the sound of a child, crying. He dreamed this dream once offworld and came up from the ground, awakened into a strange world with tears staining his face. 

Sheppard turned to look at him, silent by the fire, and watched until Ronon had angrily wiped the tears away. Then he looked away, without a word. In that moment, Ronon knew Sheppard had his own plague of dreams; only one who has dreamed can understand their power, and the importance of leaving them behind when his eyes were open. He had been right about Sheppard, and right to follow him. 

The thought comforted him, and he fell asleep again with Sheppard's gaze on him, a small joy he could pretend to ignore because it was expected. 

 

***

Ronon had seen his share of indoctrination when he served with Kell, who was a master at the game. Sheppard, it seemed, had taken some lessons in that area himself. Over a bitter hot drink called coffee and plates of eggs, Sheppard asked his questions, made his overtures. With time, Ronon began to enjoy the fall and catch of their friendship, particularly when the sly interrogations stopped and their friendship took root. 

There were things he planned to tell Sheppard, eventually. Many things. When he found the way to speak them. 

"Teyla tells me you found some survivors from Sateda," Sheppard said. He was playing with the food on his tray, not looking at Ronon. "How'd that go?"

For a moment, Ronon wondered if Teyla had told Sheppard about Kell. They would not understand, she'd said, but he'd known she was wrong. Sheppard would understand. But when Sheppard looked up and met his gaze, he saw it for what it was: curiosity, and concern. 

Anger blossomed inside Ronon in response, a slow spreading heat that pulled his jaw tight. His fork clattered to the table. "Three hundred. Out of billions," he said, low; hate crept into his throat, bloodied the words. He wanted to tell Sheppard all of it, but Teyla's warning rang strong in his ears. Instead he shoved the tray away in disgust. "Would you be satisfied if three hundred of the people from your Earth escaped a Wraith attack?"

"Satisfied?" Something dark flickered in Sheppard's eyes, something Ronon recognized, could relate to: murder. "No. But I'd be grateful for every life saved. Are you telling me you're not?"

"Grateful? No." Ronon knew from Sheppard's expression that he didn't understand, though he wanted to. It was too complicated. Too many words required to explain, and he didn't have the patience. He stood, turned, walked away, aware Sheppard was still watching him. 

When he found Teyla, she was leaving her quarters, bound for Weir's office. "I need a favor," he said, hands clenched into fists. "I need to find something. Something they don't have here in the city." 

Her eyes asked all the questions, but she spoke none of them aloud. Instead she laid her hand on his arm and said, "Come," and guided him into her quarters. 

He sat, unsure of how to begin, while she sat quietly by his side. Her silence made it easier to organize his thoughts. He clasped his hands, working them together. "It doesn't matter how many of them I kill."

"To whom do you refer?" she asked. Always so composed, no matter the chaos surrounding her. She had been among the humans longer. Ronon wondered that she was able to keep something of herself despite it. 

"All of them. Any of them." His knuckles ached where his hands were locked together. "Kell. The Wraith. They're all responsible."

"And you seek revenge? Is that it?"

"No." He stood then, pacing her tiny quarters, so much restless anger within him that he thought the walls might explode outward, making room for what he felt. "Yes. I don't know."

"Ronon." She waited until he slowed, stopped, turned to look at her. "You killed Kell for what he did to your people. You kill Wraith for the same reason, or you did, once. But that time has passed. You must find your own place in the scheme of things, here, in this place."

"That's your answer?" he snarled, then caught himself. He'd come for help because he knew she was wise, and now he was treating her as though she was a fool. Nothing in her expression changed. So she was not afraid of him. He'd suspected as much, but now he was sure. Bit by bit, he relaxed. 

"The people who have come to Atlantis are fragile, no matter their world of origin. We have built bonds of friendship because of our need for one another. What we have here cannot last, though we will not run away. Nor will we stop fighting because of what some see as inevitable. Perhaps once you come to terms with this, it will be easier."

He stared at her. "I don't want to come to terms with it." 

She smiled slightly. "You cannot keep us safe, you know. Any of us. And it is not your responsibility in the first place." She took up a cup from the bedside table, took a sip. "It is important for you to set down this burden." 

"If I set it down, then what am I?" 

"Now you have asked a question I cannot answer." Ronon closed his eyes and sighed when she added, "But there is always someone else to ask." 

 

***

They smelled of dark and damp, of closed, rotten spaces and fresh blood, and Ronon learned to scent even the tiniest traces of them. He knew the sounds they made, the nearly imperceptible signs of their presence, the gasps and growls of predators on the hunt. 

Over time, he came to understand their ways, their culture, even their customs, better than he had understood his own dead world. They became a part of him, and he a part of them, a disposable piece in the machinery of death. 

He was never free of them, even when they stopped pursuing him. 

 

***

While he was running, Ronon thought of all planets as the same size. The first time he saw one from space, it was as if he had always known - they were too vast to comprehend, and yet they were still too small. Not enough places to hide. 

Teyla's people had found this one, the place she called Emtal, which looked like a blue eye in a dark face, floating peacefully at the center of seventeen small moons. She arranged their transport. Ronon was grateful; she spared him all the explanations. Dr. Weir was kind, but she always had a thousand questions, and Ronon was tired of questions. 

The man who had the skill was so old his skin seemed stretched like the binding of a book, too smooth, with fine wrinkles worn into him by time. He set out the brush, the needle, the ink, and the cloth, and asked, "Have you coin?"

Ronon dropped the fee into the glass jar; it rattled to a stop at the bottom, the lone captive. 

"Give me the beliefs I will write for you," the artist said, taking the drawing from Ronon carelessly, as though he already knew what beliefs to create. His voice the dry rasp of time passed by, and Ronon's heart twisted in his chest. 

"Loyalty," Ronon said. "Sorrow." He hesitated for a moment, then said, "Belonging." 

Teyla waited by his side until it was done. She ran her hand along the small of his back. "It is beautiful work," she said.

He thought of the things he had almost committed to skin so many years ago, beliefs he had almost made a part of him, and was grateful they had never taken root. 

 

***

The girl was the last thing he saw before the Wraith swept him away: a tiny child, so slight he might have held her in the crook of his arm and felt her disappear. She stood at the edge of the stone gate, waiting for a mother who would not come, a rescue that would not appear; she was too frightened to cry, and too stunned to evade the culling beam. 

Her distant cries were the only sounds he could hear when they set him free, at last, to run. 

 

***

"Hey, those are new," Sheppard said from behind him. 

Ronon paused in the middle of slipping on his tunic and turned to look at Sheppard, whose gaze was fixed at the small of Ronon's back. Sheppard raised his eyes to Ronon's and watched him steadily, quietly. He required no explanation, but that didn't matter, much. 

"It would take a while to explain," he began, and Sheppard's expression changed, became blandly disinterested. 

"Sure," he said, grabbing the practice sticks from the top of the locker. "I understand." Sheppard's gaze was already averted, but he had seen. Ronon had gone many years in quest of perfect invisibility. Now he was surprised by the strength of his desire to be seen. 

He followed Sheppard down the corridor and into the sparring room. Teyla was not there. As if he had asked out loud, Sheppard said, "I told Teyla I wanted to work out with you today. Hope you don't mind."

"No," Ronon said, and threw up his sticks just in time to avoid the blow Sheppard aimed directly at his face. He grinned. This was what he loved. 

They sparred without speaking, the only sounds a grunt or gasp of pain, usually Sheppard's, though he did sometimes manage to land one good strike. Ronon could see why Teyla insisted that Ronon should not go easy. Sheppard was improving. Someday - many years from now - he might be formidable with these weapons. 

When they finally broke for respite, Sheppard fell back to the floor in slow motion, breathing hard. Ronon leaned against the wall and watched Sheppard in his sprawl. "So," Sheppard said, arms flung back over his head. "You have people out there." 

Ronon said nothing. 

Sheppard sat up and reached for a towel. "You planning to look for more of your own?"

"No." He didn't see the point in explaining why. There was too much. The feeling that he would bring danger upon them was too strong, and the fact that it was irrational made no difference. "It's enough to know they're out there."

"Okay," Sheppard said, in a tone that said he didn't really think it was okay. He shoved up from the ground and stood looking at Ronon. "If it were me, I'd want to know my people were safe. But that's just me."

"It's not just you," Ronon said sharply. "You don't understand."

"I guess not," Sheppard said. He picked up the sticks and turned to go, and suddenly Ronon had the urge to tell him, to show him. He grabbed Sheppard, turned him, threw him hard against the wall, and though Sheppard tensed, he made no move in defense. He waited, waited while Ronon came into his space, up against his body; waited until he had bent his head, and then Sheppard hissed, _"Stop."_

Ronon shuddered, but he stopped immediately. His hands closed on Sheppard's arms, then opened, ready to release. 

Sheppard gripped the nape of his neck and yanked him down, and then Ronon took Sheppard's mouth, slowly, thoroughly, a kiss deep enough to demand response. Sheppard pulled him closer, closer still, and Ronon obeyed the silent command. 

They moved to Sheppard's quarters, in a hurry, stopping only to secure the door and strip off their remaining clothes. Sheppard wanted him, every part of him, and Ronon gave himself over, taking what Sheppard offered in return. Sheppard held nothing back, and so Ronon did his best to explain his heart, not with words, but with his hands on Sheppard's body, until the taste of Sheppard's skin, the smell of him, erased every other thought from his mind. Only once did he speak, when Sheppard's teeth grazed the newly inked beliefs, and then he told Sheppard the truth: "Those are yours," he said, knowing Sheppard would not understand; he had no context for what Ronon wanted him to know. 

There was much Sheppard had yet to learn, and much Ronon could teach him. 

 

***

Over the years Ronon had become accustomed to sleeping alone, and now his ability to adapt was sorely tested. He rolled on his side, looked at Sheppard on his stomach, at his smooth clean skin, unmarked. Sheppard carried his beliefs beneath the surface, like the rest of his kind. Ronon ran his hand over Sheppard's back, leaned forward, pressed his face to bare skin. Sheppard stirred beneath his touch, but settled when Ronon pressed his weight, his presence, into Sheppard's body. 

Near dawn, he left Sheppard sleeping there and walked the corridors, listening for echoes beneath the sounds of the city. Instead, he heard the people of Atlantis winding down their days. 

It was enough to know they were there.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from this Benjamin Franklin quote: _He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too._


End file.
